Decryption of a difficult script
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Photograph accompanying a New York Times article, with the following caption: "Merle Goldman explaining the Chinese characters for the word China":
(source)
The characters do indeed say "Zhōngguó 中國" ("Central / Middle Kingdom", i.e., "China"). Observe carefully how they are written here and here (click on the triangular "go" arrowhead at the top left of each page to activate the brush stroke order of the two characters).
Here're two that can't be explained:
(source)
nǐ hǎo 你好
(lit.. "you good", i.e., "hello; hi; how are you; how do you do; howdy; good afternoon; good evening; g'day; wotcha; kia ora; howzit; yebo")
Selected readings
- "Grids galore" (11/19/23)
- "Rectilinear rectitude" (11/6/23)
- "The transcription of the name China in Chinese characters" (6/17/12)
- "Xina" (11/26/18)
- "Goodbye to Hello" (10//3/22)
- "'Hello' sung by a Kazakh" (2/14/19)
- "Much ado about Montreal greetings" (6/16/12)
[Thanks to June Dreyer, Mark Metcalf, and Alan Kennedy]
TonyG said,
December 22, 2023 @ 3:59 pm
I'm sure I'm not the only one baffled by this post. What is your point? (Also, your links just display a blank page on my laptop.)
Philip Taylor said,
December 23, 2023 @ 3:55 am
I think that the point of the post is to highlight the closed-mind mentality of some otherwise intelligent Westerners who cannot conceive of something meaningful being written in anything other than the Latin script (arguably modulo the odd superior diacritic and perhaps even a cedilla …). And both links work fine here — Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit, Seamonkey 2.53.17.1.
Jonathan Silk said,
December 23, 2023 @ 4:43 am
I knew that there are possible variations, but for guo the stroke order on the page you link to is not the order I learned. I would write the inside first stroke the same, then the long diagonal before turning to the 'mouth' after which the line under, the 'dot' then the down stroke. I had always understood that if it makes sense to do so, the strokes should end so that the brush is heading downwards, ready for the next character. (I learned to write with a pencil/pen, not a brush, and in Japan, maybe that's part of the difference?)
TonyG said,
December 23, 2023 @ 2:45 pm
In case anybody else is having trouble with those links: I found that they work if I turn off my VPN.